The Approach
We begin in stillness.
Most sessions open with a guided awareness exercise. Not because it is fashionable, but because almost everything useful in this work starts with being able to notice what is actually happening in you.
What a Session Looks Like
What an hour with me is actually like.
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A short guided practice, usually five to ten minutes. You are learning to watch your own thinking rather than be carried off by it. Over time this becomes a skill you own.
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Thought, feeling, and what the body is doing about both. I will often ask you to notice where something lands physically before we talk about what it means.
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From there it depends on you. Sometimes that is cognitive and practical. Sometimes it is older material that needs a slower hand. Sometimes it is a straight existential conversation about what your life is for.
The Five Practices of Presence
Capacities, not a curriculum.
Five practices I have spent fifty years learning and thirty teaching. You do not complete them. You build them, and then they are yours.
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Learning to sit with what is here without immediately needing to change it. Most people find this uncomfortable for about three weeks and indispensable after that.
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Attention you can carry out of the room, into a meeting, a marriage, a hard Tuesday morning. Meditation is the gym; mindfulness is the sport.
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Real conversation, which is rarer than it sounds. The kind where both people are actually willing to be changed by what is said.
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Asking the question underneath the question, then staying long enough to hear the answer. This is where most of the meaning work happens.
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The part of you that makes things is the same part that mends. Writing, music, building, painting: we put it to work rather than treating it as a hobby you have no time for.
How I Choose Method
Trained in a lot. Careful about what I use.
I am trained in cognitive behavioral work, psychodynamic work, somatic approaches, mindfulness-based therapy and the humanistic and existential traditions. That range is only useful if it is applied with restraint.
What that means in practice: I do not run you through a protocol. I pay attention to what you respond to and use the approach that fits, and I will tell you plainly when I think something is worth trying and when I think it is not.
A Note on Fit
Who this does not suit.
This work asks you to become interested in your own inner life. If you are looking for advice, a technique to apply on Tuesday, or someone to agree with you, there are better uses of your money and my time, and I will say so early rather than late.
I also do not treat addictions or eating disorders. If that is the presenting concern, I will refer you to someone who specializes in it.
When you are ready, I am here.
A free, confidential 15 to 20 minute conversation. No pressure and no paperwork, just a chance to hear each other out.